I will keep it brief today, but I want to share with you one tip that will help you understand how to sell more. If you look at pretty much any sales literature out there, you will see that one common point of discussion revolves around dealing with objections.
What do you do when your customer says no? How well do you handle their objections? Well, if part of your sales process is dealing with objections, you are wasting a ton of valuable energy and time, my friend.
I have been working with a number of life coaches, freelancers (designers), and small business owners lately and they seem to struggle with getting customers to agree to their proposals. Well, time and again, it is often they are trying to handle objections and missing a few key elements in the way they present themselves and their offer. There IS a better way.
Selling has changed. In my post on SPIN Selling, I run you through a brief history of selling and some of the new methodologies. Go read some sales articles and you will find these three words;
- Probing
- Objections
- Closing
Well, throw them out of your vocabulary.
Selling is not about dealing with objections. It is about understanding your customers in a way that you can position your product offering in a way that has the highest probability of it being accepted.
Go back and read my four part series on why we make decisions based on emotions for a bit of the neuroscience behind our choices. Essentially, we as humans, are NOT rational creatures. We react based on primal instincts as our first response.
People trust their GUT
When someone walks in a room, we make decisions with our subconscious about what we feel about them way before we consciously process our thoughts. We know that. People say “yes or no” well before they say “hello.” That is one example of the way our brains keep us safe from danger.
Because of this initial reaction, it is ten times harder to get someone who has said no to us, to change their mind and say yes to us. Change represents danger as well. Anytime someone says NO, you will have a hard time to convince them to say YES.
How easy to YOU change your mind once you have said no?
Don’t let them say no.
This is why handling objections is such a backwards way of selling. You go into a sales situation with a high probability of someone saying no, and your intention is to try and convince them to change their mind. It is actually a CRAZY way of approaching it.
Think about it the way we prepare to handle objections – you prepare all the logical reasons why they should rethink their position and buy from you. You get your facts and figures ready, and your features and benefits dialed in. So why don’t they buy? Because they said no. Even the smallest no, can spoil the whole deal. Don’t let it happen.
It’s like going in preparing to be rejected. Where is your mindset, and why the heck are you not prepared differently?
Make sure you ask good questions, demonstrate your understanding, and show them your knowledge of their issues.
Paraphrase and clarify to WIN (Conceptual Agreement)
The BEST way to avoid getting a no, is to paraphrase back to them that you understand their situation. You can also call it conceptual agreement. The highest level of conceptual agreement is doing it in a story format – THEIRS.
A conceptual agreement is a step that will absolutely accelerate your sales and is one that most people skip.
I will be launching a training program for this very soon, so make sure you have joined the list and you will get the update. Learning how to tell someone their story in the right way by using paraphrasing techniques will demonstrate that you have a clear understanding of their situation and a way forward.
Using an effective story will emotionally attach them to the discussion. The better you can tell their story in their words, the more you will tap into the limbic system and get them locked into doing business with you. They will be amped up to hear that you clearly understand them.
Then, when you have explained the story, you can simply ask, “Was there anything I missed?”
This is when getting a NO is a good thing.
Get them bought in emotionally before you ever dream of getting them to make a logical decision. People buy on emotions, then justify those decisions with logic.
If you do this correctly, you will gain the conceptual agreement and the client will most likely make the purchase AND you can get the highest lifetime value for that customer.
Stay tuned for the launch of my training program on building your own conceptual agreement, pricing options, and questioning mastery. I will be doing a video very soon. Make sure you are on the email list and even have downloaded my sales ebook.
What are your thoughts on handling objections? Leave your comments below.
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1 Response to "If You’re Handling Objections, It’s Too Late"
[…] up taking up to 10% of the total meeting time and that is perfectly fine. It is an excellent way to uncover objections well before they may surface otherwise. But if the agenda is not set, the rest of the meeting could […]